Growing Community - Josh
It is an era where the phone call becomes excessive to sending a text and television news reports are drowned by ticker-tape news feeds at the top and bottom of the screen. No doubt sharing meaningful information and maintaining relationships rooted in face-to-face interactions sometimes falls by the wayside. It’s hard not to get caught up in it all. It’s exciting! Sharing information like that and moving that fast is supposed to be exciting! We all do it. So where is the balance?
Part of the beauty of the local food movement is that it calls to mindfulness the pace at which we are living our lives. Slow food? Let’s look to slow everything. Running so fast most of the time, we hardly get a glimpse of everything happening in our peripherals. The local food movement chooses a path that can’t necessarily be the lightspeed provision of what we eat, but takes a route that draws to focus what is important. It is a value-based system that, among other things, when done right centers around community.
For one, this could not be more right. The major issues we face today all hit on the same issue of community, be it the weakening of the community as a whole via lack of human rights, industrialization, etc. Food that roots itself in not just the land but in the community is food that grows more than itself. As Sandbox grows, we’re choosing a community and a path that grows more than just the food on our land.
As excited as I am for the beginning of the growing season, you will find that I really become giddy as our community grows. The potential for our space to be shared with so many people working to better the land and to connect to people around them has me more than ready to kick off this first year. We’ll be growing a lot this summer, but we’ll really grow more when you all are there with us.